"Do you suppose that she remembers all the speeches she has made about Margaret's aristocratic bearing? If she acts as contemptibly as I expect she will, I shall repeat some of those speeches for her benefit. I've been treasuring them in my memory." "I wish this meal would come to an end." To the two impatient girls, anxious to find out just what Miss Van Gerder had said, and what she would do in amends, dinner seemed a most interminable meal. It came to an end at last, however, and Beth, with her usual directness, walked at once to Miss Van Gerder. "Will you please come to my room a few moments? I wish very particularly to see you. I am Elizabeth Newby, and I am very fond of Margaret Hamilton," and Beth was speaking the truth when she made that assertion, for she had come to like Margaret as she had not expected that she ever would. Miss Van Gerder rose instantly, despite Abby Dunbar's exclamation of annoyance. She had not been able to hear what Beth said, but she was not at all ready to resign her claim on the new arrival. "Please don't go, Miss Newby. Miss Van Gerder has just been telling me the most awful thing about Margaret Hamilton, and to think I begged her to room with me, and took her home with me this summer, and that we made her class president, it is too awful--and--" Miss Van Gerder paused a moment, a rather dangerous light in her eyes. "I shall be glad if I can persuade you to relinquish your claims on Margaret, for I want her as a room-mate myself." Then she passed on. Beth squeezed her arm ecstatically, regardless of the fact that they had never been even introduced. "You are a darling, but, oh, what possessed you to tell that girl anything about Margaret?" "How do you know I did? Oh, I suppose you were watching us. I noticed your eyes on us all through the meal. How do you happen to know anything more about Margaret than her room-mate?" "That is what I want to tell you. Will you come in, please? This is my room. Let me introduce you to two more of your classmates--my room-mate, Miss Alden, and Miss Sutherland, our star student in biology. No, don't go, girls." "I thought that I was to keep intruders out." "We will just lock the doors, and pay no attention to any knocks. Now, Miss Van Gerder, if you please, we will tell you first, what we know about Margaret and how we learned it; we are the only ones in the college who do know anything more than she has seen fit to tell. But don't imagine that she has said that she was anything that she really wasn't." "I am glad of that, now tell me your story." So Beth told it, with various interpolations by Dolly and Mary; she repeated both Rob Steele's story and the conversation which she and Dolly had chanced to overhear on the night of the freshman entertainment. [Illustration: "Let me introduce you to two more of your classmates."]